The Antigonish Movement: Moses Coady and Adult Education Today

Alexander D. Gregor is Director, Centre for Higher Education Research
and Development, University of Manitoba, and the co-editor of
Postsecondary Education in Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

The Antigonish movement was an internationally influential Canadian
adult education experiment in which adult education was regarded as
being central to a larger mission of social liberation and growth. This
carefully researched study makes a useful contribution to Canadian
social history, particularly that of the Maritime provinces; to the
history of adult education in Canada and beyond; and to the contemporary
debate on the nature and purpose of adult education in Canadian society.

Following an examination of the social, economic, religious, and
political context, the author focuses on the formal structure of the
adult education movement nurtured by Moses Coady and James Thompkins. It
had its centre in the Department of Extension established in 1928 at St.
Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; it also had roots
extending back to the first decade of the century, and its influence has
stretched beyond the seminal 1920s and 1930s to the present. Attention
is paid both to the driving social and educational philosophies and to
the resultant educational practice—the need for collective action, for
example, translating into the phenomenon of study groups.

Alexander next considers the state of contemporary adult education, and
finds it wanting. Forces like professionalization, bureaucratization,
and entrepreneurship have, in her view, shifted the focus of adult
education from social change to individual advantage—a change that
represents a serious loss not just to adult education and adult
educators, but more importantly to the society they should be serving in
a different way. This book gives both educators and the public they
serve valuable insights into an important social question.